I agree that you made a vast improvement, but one suggestion: In both of the examples you presented, the colors became unrealistically intense (aka, "saturated") by whatever process you used, so you might want to watch out for this in future edits of this sort. One way to reduce this unintended side effect would be to simply put a vibrance / saturation adjustment layer at the top of your layer stack and dial back the extra saturation that way.
If you are accomplishing the darkening by using a curves or levels adjustment layer, an easy way to hold the increase in saturation in check is to set the blending mode of the curves or levels adjustment layer to "luminosity", not "normal".
HTH,
Tom M